The Associated Press Style Rules the Newsroom

The Associated Press has published its Stylebook since 1953. It began as an internal reference at a wire service whose members — competing newspapers — needed to file stories that could be dropped into any paper's columns without reformatting. The book was small and procedural: how to spell places, when to use numerals, how long a lede could be before the copy desk started cutting.

The modern edition runs about 630 pages and is updated in real time online. In 2016 it dropped the capital in "internet." In 2014 it ruled that "over" was acceptable in place of "more than" for a numerical comparison, overturning a century of copy-desk dogma. In 2022 it switched the Ukrainian capital from Kyiv being parenthetical ("Kiev") to Kyiv as the primary form, in response to the war. Each change is discussed on its own entry page with dated notes. It is the rare reference book that behaves like a living system of record.

Other papers have their own style. The New York Times publishes its Manual of Style and Usage, first issued in 1895. The Economist keeps its famous Style Guide and its habit of calling every issue "this newspaper" even when stacked as a magazine. The Chicago Manual of Style rules books. Academic writing runs on CMOS, APA, and MLA, each with very different comma preferences. But in American newsrooms and in press releases by organizations that want to be quoted, AP is the default, because AP is where the wire comes from.

The Stylebook is also a political document. Its decision in 2020 to capitalize Black when referring to Black people, but to lowercase white, was explained in a 180-word entry. The question of whether to call a death a "homicide," a "killing," or an "execution" is spelled out with examples. A few thousand reporters work off a set of words that got decided in a conference call in New York.